Cool Mac Gear

Several version upgrades of OmniWeb have been posted since I last downloaded it, so I thought it would be timely to check out the latest 4.1.1 build, which was released a couple of weeks ago.

OmniWeb is a refreshingly small download, especially if you specify the English-only version, (Note: OmniWeb 4.1.1 supports more languages than any other Mac OS X web browser: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portugese (Brazillian), Portugese (Native), Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Finnish0, and installation is a breeze. Just drag the application from the mounted disk image to your Applications Folder, and you're in business.

OmniWeb is arguably the most distinctively different browser for the Mac OS. For one thing, it's an OS X-only, Cocoa-based application, and it includes many little wrinkles that make it unique, such as allowing you to simply drag a page to and from your bookmarks; keyboard shortcuts for finding forward and backward (and automatically wrapping around), and shrink-to-fit window zooms.

The OmniWeb Preferences setting panel is quite different from that of other browsers, and follows OS x Aqua conventions.

Because it's a Cocoa app., OmniWeb has slide-out bookmark and history "drawers," supports anti-aliased text, and enjoys access to the AppleSpell service and the Services menu clipboard. You can also use Command-Shift Y to capture a selection of a web page to a Stickie for future reference.

You can customize OmniWeb's toolbars to your heart's content.

OmniWeb is also very pretty -- IMHO hands-down the most attractive looking Browser available for the Mac platform.

I subjectively found version 4.1.1 a bit faster-feeling than previous OmniWeb builds I've tried. However, it fell flat on displaying one Web page I visit every day -- the National Post newspaper homepage (iCab has problems with this one as well).

New stuff in this version of OmniWeb:
• Enhancements ° Support for the RealOne Plugin and Player:
• Now resolves Mac OS alias files when searching for plugins (Which the RealOne plugin requires in order to be discovered.)
•
Added the RealOne Player to the list of applications OmniWeb will launch to handle a completed download. (You need to have the file associated with the correct application in Finder for this to work.)
• Now sets the creator and type information on files downloaded that have the 'audio/x-pn-realaudio' and 'application/x-pn-realmedia' MIME types. This ensures that all RealOne content downloaded will correctly launch in RealOne Player. ° Improvements to OmniWeb's HTTPS/SSL support to ensure that the browser will not connect to a domain with a security certificate that does not belong to the host. Additionally, OmniWeb will check the authenticity of all security certificates along the chain to ensure that they are all valid. This means OmniWeb is no longer vulnerable to the 'Man-in-the-middle' attack that was recently publicized on SecurityFocus .
• During HTTPS transactions, we now keep track of the hostname we think we're talking to, and verify that the certificate we receive from the server actually matches the hostname.
• In the event that OmniWeb's verification process fails, you will see an error message in the browser window like "Cannot Load Address Unable to connect, SSL_connect() failed". This error will be made more user-friendly and will eventually appear in a dialog outside of the browser window. We also plan to add a much better overall UI for certificate inspection and adding certificates that OmniWeb does not recognize. In the meantime, you can click the 'override' button to continue connecting to the host. The override lasts only as long as the current session.
• Now loads the root certificates that Apple has cleverly stashed in CoreFoundation into our SSL context when we create it and added a certificate verification callback which (in addition to SSL's checks) passes the leaf certificate off to the SSLSocket instance so that it can be compared to the URL we're trying to fetch.
• Added search locations for root certificates (SSL): ~/Library/Application Support/OmniWeb/RootCerts.pem
• The location defined by a new default, HTTPSAdditionalTrustedRootCertificates, which, by default is /Library/Application Support/MoreRootCerts.pem
• Added a new default (invisible preference), HTTPSRequireValidCertificate, which defaults to YES and controls whether or not OmniWeb goes through the verification process before proceeding into a secure site. ° Updated defaults list and associated Help files now included in OmniWeb's help (English Only) ° Removed MovieCritic.com from our default bookmarks file as they are no longer in service
• Localization Changes ° OmniWeb 4.1.1 beta 1 includes a Swedish localization courtesy of Peter Baeckström, a Finnish localization courtesy of Teemu Masalin, and an updated Traditional Chinese localization courtesy of Julian Lee.

• Bug Fixes
° Fixed a problem that arose with release 6.0r40 of the Flash plugin that prevented the plugin from working in OmniWeb. (Plugins can invoke JavaScript URLs with the expected results now.) ° Fixed some problems with Netscape-API plugins not drawing correctly (particularly controls and mouse-highlights in player plugins)
° Plugins (e.g. Flash) can now use HTTP POST
° Fixed some cases in which plugins wouldn't get correctly notified of the status of their streams
° Fixed the hanging bug seen at www.cnn.com that would cause the message "Pipeline building" to appear at the bottom of the browser window when trying to load new pages on CNN.
° Fixed a JavaScript deadlock ("spinning beachball" hang) which was 100% reproducable by increasing the font size at
° Corrected a problem with the Compatibility preference that had IE 5 for Mac OS identifying as IE 5.2 for Mac OS X and IE 5.2 for Mac OS X identifying as IE 5.12
° Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar fixes

• Fixed an incompatibility with Mac OS X 10.2 which affected hostname lookups (contacting websites)
• Now asks Launch Services which application handles a particular URL scheme before falling back on asking Internet Config. (This means that on 10.2 we now correctly determine the preferred Mail application and also correctly pass webcal URLs off to iCal, since apparently 10.2 no longer tries to keep Launch Services and Internet Config synchronized.)
• Jaguar added scroll wheel acceleration to the operating system, so OmniWeb now turns off its own scroll wheel acceleration when running on 10.2 or later.
• Corrected a problem that caused error messages to be logged in the Console at login under Mac OS X 10.2 when the system was parsing a few of our localized Services menu .strings files
• Fixed prebinding issues on 10.2. System requirements:
• This version of OmniWeb requires Mac OS X 10.1 or later. There are a few minor issues with this release when running on Mac OS X 10.2.x

This is a nice browser, that gets nicer all the time. Worth checking out if you haven't already.

OmniWeb is $29.95 shareware     

For more information, visit:
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/download/

InkWell Frustrations

By the bye, has anyone out there had any luck getting the InkWell handwriting recognition feature in OS X 10.2 to work? I spent about an hour last night trying, but to no avail. The Ink Preference Pane is there, and seems to work normally, but when I turn it on, there is no sign of the InkBar, and I haven't a clue where I should be looking for the InkBar window. Truning on the write anywhere option resulted in some gibberish showing upo in Text Edit, but it's obviously not functioning properly. Apple's brain-dead OS X online Help is no help at all.

Am I just dense? It was late at night. Any insights will be appreciated.

Networking a Wallstreet In Jaguar

From Stephen L Fisher

Perhaps you've had this problem or a reader can provide insight.

Have an iMac 600 and Wallstreet, both running OSX. Under OSX 10.1, I set network preferences and sharing to allow me to copy files from one to the other via Ethernet. Worked perfectly. Updated to 10.2. Now cannot get them to connect at all. Details:

Network settings on both: Built-in Ethernet. Configure automatically using DCHP. Appletalk turned on.

Sharing settings: Personal and FTP sharing both turned on. All others off. Built-in firewall turned on.

Can get the iMac to see the Wallstreet when I select Connect to Server from Finder menu (shows up in the server listing). However when I click connect, I get an "unidentified server error type -36" message. Apple support on web indicates this is error one might get when connecting to an improperly set up Windoze server. Beyond that Apple help is useless.

Have also tied the whole mess with all the sharing preferences turned on and the firewall off.

Also tried configuring network manually which worked in the past, but again no luck.

Be nice if someone somewhere would write a simple "here's what to enter in all the boxes" description for how to set up an ethernet network. Apple's famed plug and play certainly doesn't feature in networking in OS X.

Stephen Fisher

Hi Stephen;

Have you tried booting into OS 9 on both machines and making sure AppleTalk Ethernet networking still works under the Classic OS? You could also try booting one machine from OS 9 and trying to connect to it with the Jaguar machine. Make sure you have the "Enable File Sharing clients to connect over TCP/IP" box checked in the File Sharing Control Panel on the OS 9 machine.

Cone to think of it, I don't think I've tried an Ethernet connection with another computer since I installed Jaguar. Must check it out. However, I only have OS X installed on one computer anyway, so can't duplicate your Jaguar 2x setup.

Charles

re: PDF Browser Plugin

From David

Charles,

Every copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader comes with a browser plug in. It's in a folder named Web Browser Plug-in and the file is called PDFViewer.

It's a standard "Netscape" style plug in so it should work with most browsers. If you run the Acrobat Reader installer after you install your browser(s) the plug in will automatically installed in the browser's Plug In folder.

Well, at least for one browser it gets installed automatically--I just Option-drag the original PDFViewer to all the other browsers' Plug Ins folder so they all have it.

Or, maybe you were talking about just OS X browsers. I don't think I have a PDFViewer plug in installed in any of my OS X browsers, come to think of it. Have to check that out later.

-David

Hi David;

Hmmm. you're right, at least about the Classic OS version of Acrobat Reader. You learn something new every day. ;-)

Can't find one for the OS X version of Acrobat Reader that I have, but I can't remember where I got it, and I don't seem to have an installer.

There's a new version out this week anyway (see Shareware Beat today), so I'll have to download that and check it out.

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear